Richelle Mead: Succubus Shadows

“Funny, huh? You throw a housewarming party to show the place off, and then people trash it.”

“It’ll clean up fast,” I said, studying all the bottles and paper plates with remnants of food. Aubrey was licking frosting off a half-eaten cupcake, and I hastily took it away from her. “But not tonight. Help me take care of the perishables, and we’ll do the rest tomorrow.”

“There’s no ‘we’ in ‘clean,’” Roman said.

“That doesn’t even make sense,” I said, covering up some salsa. “And Peter’s right, you know. You really should do more around here.”

“I provide good company. Besides, how can you get rid of me?”

“I’ll get Jerome to,” I warned, referring to his demon father, who also happened to be my boss.

“Sure. Run off and tell on me.” Roman stifled a yawn, demonstrating just how worried he was about his father’s wrath. The annoying part was, he had a point. I couldn’t get rid of him on my own, and I doubted Jerome would really help. Still, I could hardly believe it when Roman did wander off to bed and leave me alone with the cleanup. I hadn’t thought he’d go that far.

“Asshole!” I yelled after him, getting only a slammed door in response. He really wasn’t that bad of a roommate, but our troubled past often made him want to annoy me. It worked.

Fuming, I finished the necessary tidying and dropped into bed a half-hour later. Aubrey and Godiva followed me, lying side by side at the end of the bed. They were a contrast in colors, like some piece of modern art. Aubrey was white with black specks on her head; Godiva was a riot of orange, brown, and black patches. All three of us drifted off to sleep immediately.

Sometime later, I woke to the sound of singing…or, well, that was the closest I could come to describing it. It was the same thing I’d felt earlier, an alluring, haunting pull that spoke to every part of me. Warm and bright and beautiful. It was everywhere and everything, and I longed to have more of it, to walk toward the light that shone with indescribable colors. It felt so, so good—like something I could melt into, if only I could reach it. I had the impression of an entrance, a door I simply had to push open and step through and—

Rough hands gripped my shoulders and jerked me around. “Wake up!”

Like before, the sensory overload vanished. I was left alone in a quiet, empty world. No more siren song. Roman stood in front of me, hands shaking me as his face stared down at me with worry. I looked around. We were in the kitchen. I had no memory of getting there.

“How—what happened?” I stammered.

The face that had taunted me earlier was now filled with concern, something that troubled a small part of me. Why should someone who wanted to kill me be worried about me?

“You tell me,” he said, releasing his grip.

I rubbed my eyes, willing myself to recall what had happened. “I…I don’t know. I must have sleepwalked….”

His face was still drawn and anxious. “No…there was something here….”

I shook my head. “No, it was a dream. Or a hallucination. I had it happen earlier…. I just drank too much.”

“Didn’t you just hear me?” There it was again, fear for me underneath the anger. “There was something here, some…force. I felt it. It woke me up. Don’t you remember anything at all?”

I stared off, trying to summon up the light and haunting melody. I couldn’t. “It was…it was exquisite. I wanted…I wanted to go to it…to be part of it…” There was a dreamy, wistful note in my voice.

Roman’s expression grew dark. As a succubus, I was a lesser immortal, one who had once been human. Greater immortals, like angels and demons, had been created at the universe’s beginning. Nephilim were born and fell somewhere in the middle. As such, their powers and senses were greater than mine. Roman could detect things I couldn’t.

“Don’t,” he said. “You feel it again, you pull away. Don’t let it draw you in. Under no circumstances should you go to it.”

I looked back at him with a frown. “Why? Do you know what it is?”

“No,” he said grimly. “And that’s the problem.”

Itossed and turned the rest of the night. Being visited by a weird supernatural force will do that to you. Besides, I had never fully recovered from the time an über-powerful entity of chaos had merged with me in my sleep and sucked away my energy. Her name was Nyx, and last I’d heard, she was imprisoned. Still, what she’d done to me—and what she’d shown me—had left a lasting impression. The fact that Roman couldn’t identify what had happened tonight was a little unnerving.

So, I woke up bleary-eyed, sporting a massive headache that was probably equal parts hangover and sleep deprivation. Succubi had the rapid healing that all immortals possessed, which meant I must have seriously screwed myself up to have these lingering effects. I knew the headache would pass soon, but I took some ibuprofen to help the process.

The condo was quiet when I shuffled into the kitchen, and despite my efforts to clean up the food last night, I was still surrounded in the tattered and worn-out feel that followed most parties. Godiva, curled up on the back of the couch, lifted her head at my arrival, but Aubrey continued sleeping undisturbed in her spot on an armchair. I started some coffee and then wandered over to my patio, staring out at the sunny day and the Seattle skyline on the other side of the gray-blue water stretching off before me.

A familiar sensation suddenly swept me, like brimstone and red-hot needles. I sighed.

“Kind of early for you, isn’t it?” I asked, not needing to turn around to know Jerome, archdemon of the greater Seattle area and my hellish boss, stood behind me.

“It’s noon, Georgie,” he replied dryly. “The rest of the world is up and around.”

“It’s Saturday. The laws of time and space are different today. Noon qualifies as early.”

I turned around at last, largely because I’d heard the coffee-maker finish. Jerome was leaning against my kitchen wall, immaculately dressed as always in a black designer suit. Also, like always, the demon looked exactly like a circa 1990s version of John Cusack. He could appear as anything or anyone he wanted in this world, but for reasons he kept vague, Mr. Cusack was his preferred shape. I’d gotten so used to it that whenever Say Anything or Grosse Pointe Blank came on TV, I always had to pause and ask myself, “What’s Jerome doing in this movie?”

I poured a cup of coffee and held up the pot by way of invitation. Jerome shook his head. “I suppose,” he said, “your roommate is also being a sloth and isn’t actually out running errands?”

“That’d be my guess.” I doused my coffee liberally with vanilla creamer. “I used to kind of hope that when he wasn’t around, it meant he was out looking for a job. Turns out I was just setting myself up for disappointment.”

Honestly, I was glad it was Roman that Jerome had come to see. When Jerome was looking for me, no good ever came of it. It always tended to result in some traumatic, world-threatening event in the immortal underground.

I trudged back across the living room, noting that the cats had disappeared upon Jerome’s arrival. Coffee still in hand, I headed to Roman’s room, knocking once before opening the door. I figured as landlady, I had that right. Also, I’d found Roman had a remarkable ability to ignore knocking for large amounts of time.

He was sprawled across his bed, wearing only a pair of navy blue boxers that gave me pause. As I’d noted before, he was terribly good-looking, despite the prickly attitude he’d had since moving in. Seeing him half-dressed always gave me a weird flashback to the one time we’d slept together. Then, I’d have to remind myself that he was probably plotting how to kill me. It went a long way to stifle any residual lust.